I rode a cresting wave of machine-gun words gushing like blood from a bullet hole. Ratta-tat-tat with nine yards of ammunition. That sort of energy is kinetic, so I clung to the horn of the saddle of my mouth like a co-ed at a bar fresh from line dancing, but still trying to impress the guy who bought her latest drink. I was just as loose-lipped, too.
Ratta-tat-tat in two-thousand character bursts. I wrote to you with shaking hands, and I missed you though you’ve never left, and I remembered that time I came home drunk, when I drove though I shouldn’t have, and I called you. I couldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t get warm and I called you because your voice is the only thing that can pierce the smoke-filled bubble covering my head like a diving bell, and I was choking. I’m still choking, but I haven’t taken a deep hit, only a deep dive, and why does everything come back to the deep?
The deep where natural monsters lurk and deep where my heart sinks and deep where miles and miles of water–salty like our moods and salty like our tears and salty like the rim of my friend’s margarita I shouldn’t have finished after four long islands–never quenches the thirst.
The deep where there’s no sound and deep where gravity bends time and deep where miles and miles of space–empty like our promises and empty like our smiles and empty like the pint glass in my hand I drained to chase the shitty margarita–never closes between us.
Ratta-tat-tat a teetering glass too hastily slammed on the bartop. I drove home along the white lines, the yellow lines, after sending you twelve lines about pretty boys and pretty girls and how much I loved you. Yours is the only make up I wanted smeared on my sheets, and yours is the only voice I needed to hear and you told me about the wars of your country and the bombs you heard and the ratta-tat-tat of rain on broken glass or dripping blood or distant gunfire.
And I’m crashing, sweetheart, like my car didn’t that night on the road, but like I did after I collapsed in my bed. The belt is empty and I’ve reached the character limit and the glass has finally settled.
Call me. Give me a history lesson as I drift to sleep.